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Purpose This paper examines adolescent’ money attitudes in the USA and France. It introduces and validates an 18-item scale for assessing adolescent money attitudes, explores the symbolic values that American and French teens attach to money, identifies the major segments of teens based on their attitudes toward money and assesses the importance that these groups place on price, novelty and brand name.Design/methodology/approach Twenty-eight in-depth interviews were initially conducted to explore adolescent’ money attitudes, assist in the development of measures and provide a context for interpreting subsequent results. Exploratory factor analysis (among 90 French and 70 American adolescents), followed by confirmatory factor analysis (among 332 French and 273 American adolescents) indicated that six dimensions captured money meanings. These dimensions were used in a subsequent cluster analysis to group teens into segments.Findings Six dimensions (worry, achievement, status, security, budget and evil) captured teenage money attitudes among French and American adolescents. A cluster analysis based on these dimensions yielded three groups: no worries, success and security. These three groups varied in their attitudes toward money and the importance that they placed on price, brand and novelty in purchasing.Practical implications This study provides measures for assessing adolescent money meanings and presents a preliminary segmentation of USA and French adolescents based on their attitudes toward money.Originality/value The results explore the impact of money attitudes on adolescent consumption preferences, demonstrate the utility of measuring adolescent’ money attitudes and segmenting adolescents based on these attitudes and emphasize the importance of both cultural and individual differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]